


The Minute She Died

by Ducks



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Drug Use, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-15
Updated: 2004-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:25:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ducks/pseuds/Ducks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He feels it like a K-hole in reality.</p><p>Takes place immediately after AtS: Hole in the World.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Minute She Died

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2005 "Original AtS/BtVS Stoner/Junkie Ficathon" on LJ.

The minute Fred died, Gunn felt it: a sensation like the one time him and Faith did Special K while she was visiting, after Angelus but before she split for Sunnydale. Like a hole in reality that his brain and heart and everything just got flushed through, like his soul being vacuumed away his heart crushed by the pressure, his stomach twisting like a dimensional portal was tearing it out through his pores. Like reality just wasn't real anymore.

 _"Oh. Dude." Faith's laughter was fierce and edged with a fine sheen of panic. " This is not cool. I can't sit up."_

 _"Naw, it's good," he'd corrected her enthusiastically, because the feeling of falling, plunging, twisting, plummeting, pulling, flying was so liberating, so electric, he was instantly hard as a rock. E never did anything but make him grab random people like some crazy hugging hippie freak. K made him move, fast and furious, without using his body at all. Flying with no wings._

 _The bottom dropped out of everything the moment Fred Burkle left the world. No more pancake kisses. No more Texas Loves the Black Man. No more... Winifred. She wasn't his anymore anyway, but that didn't matter. Just her existence had made his life a better place._

 _Now that existence was over, because of him, and all that remained was sorrow. Plunging instead of flying, but just as hallucinatory and insane._

 _"G, I don't think we were supposed to take the whole thing. My voice is echoing. What's that about? Echo! ECHO!"_

 _Faith's big brown eyes were twice as big as they usually were, with almost no pupils at all, and he knew if he tripped and stumbled, he'd drown in them and never find his way out again. His heart was still gushing from the wounds Fred left, and the K had sounded like a good distraction. As usual, he was right and wrong all at once._

 _"You shouldn't trip when you're cleaning up after an apocalypse, Faith," he called to her across the growing chasm between their bodies. He reached out over the distance, and was surprised that his arm was long enough to make it._

 _"It was your idea to take it, yo!" the Slayer cried. "Maybe you're not supposed to mix with Orpheus."_

 _"You said you were bored," he reminded her. "You said you needed to let off some steam."_

 _"So if I said, 'Hey, sticking my hand in a blender sounds like fun,' would you head for the nearest bar?"_

 _"If I thought I might get to make love to you after, Hell yeah."_

 _She's stared at him for a long time in thoughtfully tripping silence. Then: "Is your hair growing?"_

 _The heart's a fickle beast. No, not the heart. The heart just broke. Hung around for a while then turned to dust. Dicks, however, were heartier things, and his had taken up control of the situation where the rest of him had abandoned it._

Out of control, just like now. He'd always thought he couldn't control death. He was wrong. Hadn't he just killed Fred? So why couldn't he bring her back?

 _"Fuck, I can't stand it. Help me get my shirt off!"_

 _Gunn ripped the thin black silk straight off Faith's strong back, and gave into the compulsion to lick the hallucinated blood off her tribal tattoos. "That is fucking hot. You're bleeding, man," he pointed out helpfully, even though some small, still-sober part of him realized she wasn't really._

 _Faith shivered as he traced the line of her spine over firm curves and tight muscles with his eager tongue. Slayer skin. Like licking life._

 _"Like cinnamon and chocolate," he moaned, and in a flash finally *got* the attraction of vampirism – the ability to taste the essence of another being. Her magick shot through him like heroin, her storm in his veins. "I can taste your power."_

 _"That's the dope talking, Shakespeare."_

He sat down hard on the edge of the hospital bed, his legs simply giving out as his brain held the refrain:

Fred. Is dead. Fred is. Dead. Fred is Dead. Fred. Dead. Freaddead. DeadFred. FreddeadFreddeadFreddeadFreddeadFreddead.

What were they going to tell her parents? How could the world keep turning without her? Why didn't he just die, now that his soul had been flushed down the karmic toilet?

 _"Jesus, your skin is burning up, G. Been eating fire?" Faith had whispered, her tongue flicking over his erect nipple, under the curve of his pec, over the cuts of his abs. He shuddered in pleasure and remembered the one and only time he smoked crack – how his skin had burned and shimmied and threatened to pull right off his bones..._

Where were Angel and Spike? Why hadn't they put a stop to this? What the Hell had they run off for if they couldn't save her?

 _"I was a second ago. Now how about we give up the yakkin' and get back to the good stuff?"  
_

He can't remember being inside her. He knows he was. He got into the cab the next day smelling like woman and power and that slight funky stink of drugs and sex. His skull felt vacuumed clean, and his dick sore and satisfied.

Now he'd killed Fred. Probably would have been better if he'd just shot her himself. Quicker. Less scary. God, she would have been so scared. They said that Ketamine was like a near-death experience. Was that fallingflying sensation what had taken Fred out of the world, or had she felt the monster devouring her from the inside out?

She didn't know anything about death, really. That's why he hadn't let her kill Professor Seidel. He'd been chasing the Reaper for years. Hardly made any difference to his karma at this point. One more body, no big deal.

But it had been a big deal, hadn't it? A deal big enough to break them both.

 _His orgasm seemed like it happened to some carbon copy of him a hundred miles away. He could feel it, he could hear himself shout and Faith scream, but it was like he was watching it all on TV. His body came, but his spirit didn't._

 _"Fucked up, man," Faith had gasped. "I thought that time when me & B got high and fucked was weird..."_

Now was the same – the real him was floating above himself, watching himself fall back on the mattress to cry like a baby, curled up in the perfect white hospital sheets sobbing like he really was getting swept violently down that K-hole again.

The same hole his entire life just got sucked down. Fred was dead, and he had killed her. It seemed impossible. Unreal. A million miles away. An unforgivable sin committed by a different fool altogether.

Problem was? No peaceful euphoria at the end of this ride. No drugged sleep. Just fear and pain and loss. Just death.

He almost wished he had some K now. Or a warm female body to lose himself in. Or both. Whatever it took to forget that he knew the minute she died.


End file.
